puterized entry documentation, Osborn was able to demonstrate convincingly that Seligmann was on the phone or in a cab during much of the time when the attack allegedly took place. Osborn and the other attorneys began filing a series of motions, effectively opening whole portions of Nifong's case to public view. The evidence revealed that when the investigator Ben Himan first contacted the second stripper, Kim Roberts-she had made the first 911 call and was the driver of the Honda at Kroger-about the alleged rape, she called it "a crock" and said that it couldn't have happened. According to the de- fense attorneys, medical records showed that the hospital personnel who treated the accuser observed no sign of anal as- sault, only vaginal swelling. A statement given to police by a man who had driven the woman to various appointments in the days before the party indicated that she had seen at least three different cli- ents in private performances at hotels that weekend. The defense could at- tempt to attribute the swelling to the performance with a vibrator that the woman had mentioned to Himan. Ac- counts from police and medical person- nel now showed that the accuser had offered as many as ten differing accounts of what happened that night. In the early phase of the story, the media had profiled the accuser as a work- ing mother and full-time college student. N ow her image was steadily being tar- nished. She had told a nurse on the night of the assault that she was taking the muscle relaxant Flexeril. The accuser's family, in what was apparendy meant to be a sympathetic series of reports in the magazine Essence, divulged that she had suffered a nervous breakdown last year, prompting a weeldong stay in a Raleigh hospital. Other press accounts revealed that a decade ago she'd made an earlier rape allegation that wasn't pursued (her father now said that it was falsely made); that she'd accused her former husband of trying to kill her; and that after a tryout at a strip club she had stolen a cab and led police on a drunken chase. It was also learned that the photo identification of the three players Nifong indicted was the result of a procedure so problematic that it may prove not to have been worth the effort. Mter the failure of the first two tries at getting an identifÌca- tion, Nifong instructed police to compile a photographic lineup consisting only of lacrosse players, and to ask the accuser if she recognized her attackers. That process (which Osborn described as "a multiple- choice test with no wrong answers") seems to have been a violation of the Durham Police Department's own rules. The accuser, meanwhile, has van- ished; it is possible that she is in the pro- tective custody of the police. Her father, who had speculated that she might not be up to testifying in a criminal case, said this month that he had not seen her since June. B rodhead reflected on all that had happened as we chatted in his office inJuly, and said that it brought to mind Shakespeare's "Othello" -not for its ob- vious associations with interracial pas- sions and violence but for its lesson on prejudgment. The scene at the beginning of the play, he said, was particularly in- structive. Desdemonà s father hears about his daughter's relationship with the Moor, and he sighs, "Belief of it op- presses me already." "He doesn't say, 'Oh, now I see what you're getting at,' " Brodhead said. "He's saying, 'Now I realize that I always be- lieved it'-'Belief of it oppresses me al- ready.' It's probably, to my mind, the greatest literary image of the action of prejudice-how a story is told to engage something in the mind that brings with it absolute certainty that derives from the nature of the stereotypes." He had located a clarifying point of reference in the lacrosse ordeal, and he became animated. It had been a head- long narrative, driven partly by a willing- ness to affirm favored certitudes about justice. " 'Belief of it oppresses me already,' you know?" he continued. "And the thing is, we actually can't blame people for being subject to this, because it is so deeply human. And if: from day to day, we've seen people in the throes of this, we recognize that as a dimension of our humanity. At the same time, it really is our obligation to resist it, because, you know-truth and justice, they are cant phrases unless we try to take the trouble to make them have a reality to them. And what do truth and justice mean? Truth and justice mean something oppo- site from our preconceptions." . Advertisement NEW YORKER DESK DIARY Order Your 2007 Desk Diary Today THE N WYORKER j' II l ) CHRIS NEAL Available in four colors, with an elegant new cover design. 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